


Sink

by amporasbitch



Category: DRAMAtical Murder
Genre: Drowning, M/M, Rescue, don't worry I'm not that mean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-07
Updated: 2014-11-07
Packaged: 2018-02-24 10:18:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2577956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amporasbitch/pseuds/amporasbitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clear and Aoba go to the beach, but it doesn't quite go as planned (wow I'm apparently shit at summaries orz).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sink

**Author's Note:**

> Woo, my first ever Dramatical Murder fic, and the first fic I've ever posted here. I love fics where someone's in danger and their boy/girlfriend saves them, so that's what you're getting. I hope it's angsty and fluffy enough for ya.
> 
> Oh, also, the break in it signals a little time skip but also a POV change. It goes from third person omniscient to third person limited (Clear's POV). Just in case it's confusing.
> 
> Happy reading!

It was a classic summer day for Midorijima: Bright, sunny, but ultimately far too hot and humid to be fully enjoyable. Clear had been the one to suggest going to the ocean’s shore to have some fun. Aoba had agreed to it, seeing as there wasn’t much else to do in this weather. He didn’t have work today, and he was looking forward to spending some time with Clear. They’d be all by themselves, too; Ren had opted to stay home with Tae. He may have been a waterproof Allmate, but he was still an Allmate, and an old one at that. Whether or not he’d be able to handle sand or saltwater was not something he was willing to experiment with.

So Aoba and Clear went down to the ocean. Clear had been to the ocean many times since he came to stay with Aoba, but said blue-haired man had never accompanied him before. It wasn’t a far walk, only around half an hour or so, and before they knew it their toes were burning in the hot sand and the ocean stretched out before them like a blue blanket.

The pair shed their shirts, having already put on swimming trunks, and went into the water. Clear went in first, not pausing for a moment even as the chill of the water spread higher up his body the farther he went.

“Uwah, it’s cold!” he laughed. He turned to look at Aoba, who was entering the ocean at a snail’s pace. He pouted at his boyfriend’s hesitance.

“Yeah, it’s cold. I need a minute to get used to it.” Aoba told Clear upon seeing the android’s childish expression.

“You’re no fun, Aoba-san,” Clear muttered. He stood impatiently, already up to his waist, waiting for Aoba to come in.

Before long, Clear had a devious idea. He rushed back through the water to Aoba, grinning mischievously.

“Clear, what are you-” Aoba began, before suddenly realizing Clear’s intentions. He had no time to react, however, and was pulled out into the water. Clear toppled in his exuberance, sending both of them into the sandy ground. Both were nearly completely soaked.

“Clear, what was that for??” Aoba grumbled, irritable and cold.

“You were taking so long to get used to the water, I thought I would help!” Clear answered, his grin ever bigger. “You’re used to it now, aren’t you?”

Aoba tried to stay annoyed, but he couldn’t help but grin back as Clear.

“I guess so…” he conceded, a plan for revenge sparking in his mind. Clear laughed, and didn’t notice Aoba’s arm until it had splashed water right into Clear’s face.

“Payback!” Aoba shouted, laughter in his voice. Clear seemed surprised at first, but very quickly recovered and splashed Aoba back.

The pair continued like that for a while, sitting in the water close to shore, getting each other thoroughly drenched. Somehow, they ended up in each other’s warm embrace, trading soft kisses.

“You’re ridiculous Clear.” Aoba murmured, a gentle smile on his face.

“So are you, you big baby, not wanting to get wet!” Clear teased, before playfully kissing the tip of Aoba’s nose.

Aoba laughed at both the comment and the kiss, and returned the favor with a light peck to Clear’s forehead.

“Well, I’m soaked now. Do you want to swim out deeper?” Aoba asked the android.

“Yes!” Clear exclaimed, childish excitement filling his expression. “Maybe we’ll see some jellyfish!”

“Jellyfish sting,” Aoba reminded Clear as he stood up. “Even if you see one you shouldn’t go near it.”

“Awww…” Clear whined, standing up as well. “At least there’s jellyfish on the raft!”

Aoba, having already laughed too much to be able to laugh any more, simply smiled and shook his head in exasperated fondness as Clear ran to the spot where they’d put their beach supplies. One of those items was a pink, two-person inflatable pool raft adorned with a pattern of paler pink jellyfish. It belonged to Clear, of course. It had been a struggle to carry due to its shape, but Clear had been adamant that he would bring it.

When Clear came back with the raft, he and Aoba swam out into the ocean. They swam until their feet didn’t hit the ocean floor anymore, and then got on the raft together. From this far out, they could see some of the city beyond the shore, and looking up providing a spectacular view of the blue sky. It was an interesting contrast, looking between the manmade city and the natural sky, floating gently in the ocean’s soft waves.

For a long while, they laid like that together, simply observing the world around them.

~~~

Clear loved the ocean. He always had. Aside from the fact that it was where jellyfish resided, the ocean was also a source of mystery to him. Mystery, strength, and beauty. Clear knew that he wasn’t very mysterious. Every part of him had been planned, blueprinted, calculated, built, and assembled by professionals. Every part of him was artificial. The ocean, on the other hand, seemed to be the only thing in the world that remained largely out of humankind’s control. Clear had read somewhere that more was known about the surface of the planet Mars than about the bottom of the ocean floor. The ocean was deep enough to swallow secrets, with a hugeness that gave Clear butterflies in his stomach when he thought about it.

Clear also loved Aoba. He loved Aoba much more than he loved the ocean of course, but they did have some similarities. They both contained a lot of blue, for one thing. They were also similar in how much depth there was to them. For the ocean it was literal, for Aoba, more figurative. Aoba had a lot of strength and will inside of him, even if he didn’t show it. He did once, a long time ago, back at Platinum Jail. Even as Clear and Aoba made love for the first-and what should have been the last-time, even as Aoba cried through his kisses, Clear could see the cold determination in his partner’s eyes as his own pink ones glazed over. That determination caused Aoba to spend countless hours trying to piece Clear back together, and to find someone who could fix him completely. Clear would be forever grateful for that, and took a strange pride in how strong Aoba was, how he wouldn’t give in to hopelessness or despair. Aoba was so strong, so brave, and Clear couldn’t imagine being anywhere but by his side.

Right now, being next to Aoba and the ocean, the two things he loved, Clear was at total peace with the world and everything in it.

The sun had been shining down on them as they laid on the raft, and by now they were nearly dry. Clear had another mischievous idea, and smiled to himself. He turned to look at Aoba, who had peacefully closed his eyes. Was he asleep? Probably, Clear thought. His boyfriend could sleep anywhere, at pretty much any time. He nudged Aoba a little with his arm. Aoba gave a slight jolt, then opened his eyes.

“Clear, what is it…” he muttered. Yes, he’d definitely been asleep.

“I just wanted to make sure you were awake before I pushed you off the raft!” Clear replied cheerily.

“Oh, then that’s-wait!” Aoba cried, just as Clear shoved him into the ocean.

Clear laughed as Aoba’s head poked out from beneath the waves. He coughed a little and glared at Clear.

“Sorry Aoba-san, but we had almost dried off from before!” Clear explaining, still giggling a little. “We have to get wet if we go to the beach don’t we?”

Aoba sighed and shook his head, but a smile was evident on his lips.

“In that case, you come in too, before I-drag you in,” Aoba retorted, pausing sharply towards the end of his sentence. Clear frowned.

“Is something wrong, Aoba-san?” he asked. “You stopped talking for a second.”

“It’s nothing, I just felt like something tugged on me…” Aoba answered, tipping his head to peer into the deep water.

“Was it an animal?” Clear asked. He instantly thought of jellyfish, but of course they couldn’t grab anyone.

“No…” Aoba replied slowly, finding the words to explain. “It was the water.”

“The water…?” Clear murmured. Water pulling someone? That didn’t make much sense.

“I know it sounds weird, but-” Aoba paused again, but this time it had a different tone. He looked past Clear back to shore. “Clear, were we out this far before?”

Clear turned to look behind him, and to his surprise, the shore seemed much farther away than it had when they first climbed on their raft. He was about to say so when he heard a sharp gasp from behind him.

He whipped his head back just fast enough to see a bubble escape the surface where Aoba once was.

Oh no.

“Aoba-san!” Clear cried before leaping from the raft and into the cold water.

A rip current. It was a rip current. He should have thought of it when Aoba said that the water had pulled him. It was strong. Clear could see Aoba; the bright sun above made the water less dark than normal. Aoba noticed Clear, but there wasn’t much he could do. He struggled against the water, but the current continued to drag him along. Clear observed with terror that the current was also very slightly pulling Aoba _down_ as well.

Clear was an android, not fully human. He breathed oxygen, but his heart contained a generator that kicked in when no oxygen was available so his blood would continue flowing. Aoba had no such generator. Oxygen was all he could use, and there was none of it here that was usable.

If Clear didn’t get to him quickly, Aoba would drown.

Clear swam towards him as fast as he could, and he suddenly felt the current pulling him as well. But for Clear it was an advantage; the current’s speed combined with Clear’s swimming allowed him to reach Aoba faster.

Aoba reached out to him, and Clear grabbed his arms and pulled him close. One arm remained around Aoba while the other went back to swimming. It was much harder now that he had to work against the current instead of with it, but Clear pushed on. He tried to swim out of the current’s reach, but its force kept him on a single long path.

Halfway back to the surface, Clear felt Aoba move. He looked over at him to find Aoba’s hands clapped over his mouth and his eyes screwed shut in fear. Clear felt cold terror at the pit of his stomach. He was running out of time.

Clear swam harder, faster, frantically determined to reach the surface. The current seemed to fight with him, trying to drag both men into the ocean’s depths. So close, they were getting close, little by little, every second they were closer, closer-

But then Clear felt more movement from Aoba. A convulsion. Then he began to struggle in Clear’s hold. Clear wanted to reassure him, but the water prevented it, and he was too scared to say anything helpful, anyhow. Clear knew that Aoba’s body had finally opened his mouth in a desperate attempt for air, but there was only water to rush into Aoba’s throat. Clear swam, so hard, so fast, but the current was so strong and Aoba’s frantic struggling made swimming and holding him both at once difficult, and then Clear felt it, he _felt_ Aoba’s final shudder just before he went totally limp, becoming a dead weight in Clear’s grasp.

There was so much water around him that Clear couldn’t tell if he was crying or not. But he found it hard to keep from sobbing as he raced to the surface.

When he finally made it up, he kept on swimming. He was certain that the current would take them again if he slowed or stopped, and he _had_ to get Aoba to shore as fast as possible. He swam, changing his hold on Aoba so his head was above the water. Now that his own face was out of the water Clear determined that yes, he was crying. The forgotten pink raft, now empty, floated slowly away.

Finally, finally, after what felt like hours, Clear made it to shore. He pulled Aoba completely out of reach of the breaking waves and laid him down. His eyes were closed, his lips were slightly parted, and his skin was ghostly pale. His wet hair was plastered against his cheeks and neck, making him look unbearably fragile.

Clear pushed the sodden blue hair away from Aoba’s neck to check his pulse. He was shaken to realize he felt nothing beneath his fingers. Memories of lying beside Aoba at night, head on his chest, feeling his steady heartbeat thumping lightly in the dark filled his mind. That familiar heartbeat was no longer there.

So Clear fully expected, logically, not to hear any sound when he checked Aoba’s breathing. He was right, but it wasn’t a comfort. Not at all.

He wanted to panic. He wanted to scream. Tears were already flowing, and he wanted to sob until his chest ached. But there was no time for that. Aoba needed him.

Clear wasn’t stupid, despite what his naïve and childlike behavior implied. He’d been programmed with quite a few basic skills, and some of them had come in handy in the past. Two that he had never before had to use were the ability to perform CPR and rescue breathing. He’d hoped he’d never have to use them, but it seemed that Fate had decided differently.

Clear tried to empty his mind and let mechanical, artificial instinct take over. Thirty chest compressions, each one five centimeters deep (Aoba would have bruised ribs or a sore chest at the very least if he woke up- _when_ he woke up, _when_ , not if, never if). After that, two rescue breaths (his mouth tasted like saltwater and not at all like how it did when Aoba kissed him). Repeat until circulation and breathing resume.

Two cycles.

_Come on Aoba, wake up, please wake up_

Three cycles.

_Aoba please, please breathe, I love you Aoba, wake up, I’m right here with you_

Four cycles.

_Aoba breathe, breathe, wake up, come back, please Aoba please don’t give up don’t give up on me not after everything we’ve been through_

Five cycles.

_Oh God oh God oh God no no no this can’t be happening this isn’t happening Aoba wake up wake up now you can’t do this to me you can’t leave me like this you can’t die like this you’re stronger than this AOBA DON’T LEAVE ME I NEED YOU AOBA COME BACK TO ME_

After five cycles, use an AED to administer an electric shock to the victim. If an AED is not available, continue performing CPR until medical personnel arrive.

Six, seven, eight cycles…

_WAKE UP WAKE UP WAKE UP WAKE UP BREATHE BREATHE BREATHE AOBA PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE AOBA AOBA AOBA AOBA_

This was hopeless. Logically, Clear knew it. He knew that if Aoba was going to revive he would have done so already. At first he persisted, despite his better judgment. But as he was poised to begin cycle number eleven, his heart finally lost hope as well. He was full-on sobbing now, his hands moved away from Aoba’s chest to entangle in his white hair.

“Aoba-san…!” He cried helplessly.

It was his fault. He’d failed to recognize the rip current in time, he hadn’t gotten Aoba out of the water fast enough, he’d pushed Aoba off the raft, he’d suggested this stupid trip in the first place. Aoba was going to die and it was all his fault. Aoba looked broken laying there, chest mottled purple in bruising, face whiter than any person should ever be, and heartbreakingly still.

His fault. All his fault.

His love. Once his master, then his equal, but no less valued. And now, gone.

No more Master. No more Aoba-san.

No more anything.

The reality of having to live without Aoba was terrifying to Clear, but then he remembered that he wasn’t the only one who would grieve. Oh no, he’d have to _tell_ them, he’d have to go to Ren and Tae and Koujaku and Mizuki and he’d have to tell them that Aoba was dead and that he was the cause. He hated to imagine what would happen when he did. He imagined Ren trying to remain stoic but knowing that he no longer had any purpose now that his owner was dead. He imagined Tae stiffening in the way that she does when she hears shocking news, trying not to let her emotions show but being unable to because her beloved grandson was dead. He imagined Koujaku getting angry at first, punching things, maybe Clear, maybe a wall, screaming in rage and cursing Aoba for leaving him, and finally burning himself out and collapsing into a sobbing mess because his childhood friend was dead. He imagined Mizuki staring back at Clear in shock, Aoba wasn’t dead, he couldn’t be dead, but he was dead, and the tears would flow as the truth sank in that _Aoba was dead_.

Clear couldn’t do it. He couldn’t. He already knew he couldn’t. He couldn’t go back to them and tell them that he let Aoba die. He was a coward. He was the worst kind of coward.

A coward who had one last burst of emotional strength in him, enough to grab Aoba by the shoulders and give his limp body a violent shake.

“Aoba-san, how could you!?” Clear screamed, not stopping at one shake, continuing. He’d always been so conscious of his immense strength around Aoba before, and despite his effortless control over his strength how he’d still be so gentle with Aoba, and never dreamed of hurting him. He’d never done anything as violent to Aoba as he was doing now, and deep down, it frightened him a little.

Perhaps that was why he soon stopped. Or perhaps his last bit of energy had faded. Perhaps both. Clear released Aoba’s shoulders, and now felt even guiltier and even more upset than before.

“Aoba-san…Aoba-san…” Clear had nothing left in him to say anything else. His arms went around his own body, like he thought that, if he hugged himself hard enough, he’d squeeze himself out of existence. He briefly wondered if his strength was enough to destroy his mechanical body, if he really could squeeze himself broken.

The thought would have been much less brief had Clear not heard a quick, choked-sounding gurgle.

Clear couldn’t think of much for the next minute, because suddenly Aoba was coughing himself back from oblivion, and Clear was holding him up with a hand on his back, and seawater flooded from Aoba’s throat with every loud cough.

And it did take a good minute, perhaps a little longer, for Aoba to stop coughing and finally get a handle on his breathing, and Clear was able to realize.

Aoba. Breathing. He was breathing. He was coughing, now he was breathing. His eyes were open, he was moving. His face was red from coughing, not dangerously pale.

Aoba was alive. He was alive. Clear wouldn’t have to tell the others Aoba was dead. Clear saved him. Clear saved Aoba.

Clear found that he missed Aoba very much, even though he was tight there and _alive oh my God you’re alive..._

“Clear,” Aoba began, his voice harsh and ragged, “What hap-”

He wasn’t able to continue because Clear grabbed him and hugged him close, as tight as he dared, and buried his head into his shoulder.

“Clear…” Aoba murmured, embracing Clear in return.

The pair stayed that way for a while, not speaking, just holding each other. Clear muffled his hitching sobs in Aoba’s soggy blue hair as Aoba’s hand went through Clear’s white locks. It was…silly, Clear thought. Clear wasn’t the one who almost died ( _Aoba almost died_ ). He should be comforting Aoba, not the other way around.

Maybe it was because Clear knew what it was like to lose someone. He knew the awful feeling of _I’m never going to talk to him or listen to him or see him smile or anything ever again_. But it had been so drastically different with Grandfather. He was old. Clear was prepared. And it was peaceful. He went to sleep and never woke up. There was nothing Clear could have done, and in a way, he accepted it.

What happened to Aoba was not like that. It was not expected, it was not peaceful, it was not painless and quiet and everything that death should be in the best circumstances. And there was something Clear could have done, and he very nearly failed.

“Thank you, Clear,” Aoba murmured, as if he could read Clear’s mind. “Thank you for saving me. That was…” He didn’t finish his statement, but he didn’t need to.

“I was scared,” Clear half-whimpered, voice muffled by Aoba’s hair. “I thought…” Again, a statement that didn’t need to be finished. He felt Aoba’s lips in his hair.

“I’m okay.” Aoba said softly. “We’re both okay.”

Clear lifted his head from Aoba’s shoulder and looked into his eyes. The gravity of what happened was definitely there, but the warmth of gratitude was also evident. Clear’s guilt over the situation was ebbing away. Suddenly, Aoba’s eyes flashed with recognition.

“Oh, what happened to the raft?” He asked, confused.

Clear couldn’t help it, he laughed.

“That’s what you’re worried about?” Clear answered, giggling.

“Well, I don’t see it anywhere,” Aoba replied, laughing also. “Besides, I was only trying to lighten the mood.”

“I guess you did…” Clear replied. He blinked. “Hey, I sound like you.”

“That’s my line!” Aoba chided playfully, lightly shoving Clear.

And just like that, Clear’s guilt vanished completely.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, a disclaimer: That is not how rip currents work. Like, at all. They can't pull you out that far, and they definitely can't drag you underwater. Don't let my inaccurate fanfiction freak you out. The stuff about CPR is legit though, at least, I think it is. I got it from the Mayo Clinic website, so.
> 
> I'd appreciate constructive criticism! I think my pacing needs work in particular, if anyone has advice. I also struggled with the ending. I'm planning on making a career out of writing stories, so advice is definitely appreciated.
> 
> I'll be writing again soon, but don't hold your breath. I'm painfully slow. This little fic took me two weeks. But I've got ideas floating around, so stay tuned if you liked this!


End file.
